"Posterity will owe everlasting thanks to John Brown for lifting up once more to the gaze of a nation grown fat and flabby on the garbage of lust and oppression, a true standard of heroic philanthropy, and each coming generation will pay its installment of the debt. . . . John Brown saw slavery through no mist or cloud, but in a light of infinite brightness, which left no one of its ten thousand horrors concealed." Frederick Douglass

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Friday, February 13, 2015

Preview--The Unsung Correspondent Who Covered John Brown's Last Days in Virginia

Over the last couple of years I have paid close attention to the reportage on John Brown's last days for my forthcoming book, Freedom's Dawn (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers). In examining press reports and narratives, I was happy to discover a young journalist named Edward H. House, who was the sole antislavery journalist to cover Brown's trial, incarceration, and last hours as an undercover correspondent of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. House, known as "Ned," was one of the memorable "Bohemians" of the antebellum era, who came to New York City from Boston about 1854 to assume the position of drama and music critic for Greeley's paper. A talented, self-taught writer and artist, Ned House was a strong antislavery man although he had been affiliated with the Democratic party while in Boston, and even held interests in a Democratic paper back in Beantown. This proved extremely fortuitous in serving the Republican Tribune, since no antislavery journalist was admitted to Charlestown after the Harper's Ferry raid and throughout Brown's final days.

"Ned" House

House's fascinating story already has been wonderfully documented by the fine scholar, James Huffman, in A Yankee in Meiji Japan: The Crusading Journalist Edward H. House (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). However, Professor Huffman's focus is largely upon House's his later years as a journalist living in Asia, and thus his treatment of Ned House during the antebellum era is relatively brief. Huffman has been most supportive and encouraging of my work, which has been singularly concerned with House's role as the unknown Tribune correspondent. This is a story in itself, since the leadership and people of Charlestown and Virginia in general were disgusted by House's regular correspondence, which he smuggled to New York using various methods. No wonder: House's coverage presents an honest and detailed account, not only of Brown in jail, but also of Brown's impact upon Virginians and their enslaved victims. In one case, a Virginia officer was so enraged that he tore the Tribune with his teeth, not knowing that House was happily observing his outrage. Of course, House promptly reported the episode, providing a virtual laugh track for Brown's antislavery friends in the North.

Indeed, House's writing is fun--witty and stinging in his observations. But it is also insightful: House alone observes and understands the behavior of local blacks, noting their intense interest in the imprisoned Brown, as well as the subterfuge of local blacks in setting fires. Rather than underestimate them as simple, childlike creatures, House knows they are organized, communicative, and capable of "mischief"--something that slaveholders were intent upon overlooking or denying.

During the weeks of his challenging assignment, Ned House sent page after page of detailed and sometimes revelatory reportage to the Tribune, providing information that never would have made it into the pages of history had historians had only the right-wing and proslavery New York Herald and other proslavery reportage. Sad to say, most writing about the raid and its aftermath has used newspaper reportage uncritically, which explains why so many fallacies have persisted in the popular narrative.

Most notable is the failure of historians to discern the long-term damage caused by depending upon the Herald, whose racist editor, James G. Bennett almost exclusively depended upon local proslavery Virginia affiliates to provide his reportage. While it is true that the Herald is in many respects is a kind of almanac of stories and details regarding the Harper's Ferry episode, the slant of its reportage prohibited fair coverage of Brown's last days. For instance, one of the greatest frauds that came via the Herald's Virginia reports was the unfounded claim that Brown was disappointed by the lack of response from enslaved blacks. This is particularly true of the single, fraudulent report about Brown's final interrogation of raider John Cook on the morning of December 2. According to this untrustworthy report, the old man complained that Cook had misinformed him about black support. I found this dubious account in one single report, undoubtedly written by a local affiliate, with no other attesting reportage. Indeed, this report contains a number of baseless and fraudulent details which I believe were planted in the Herald by the Virginia affiliate.

The Charlestown Jail, where Brown
spent his final days, is no longer standing

In this light, Ned House was the perfect antidote to the predominant proslavery and ultra-conservative reportage that was largely fed to the North (and to history) as a result. Ned House, protected by an aura of Democratic and friendly profile, went almost perfectly undetected from Brown's trial in October until his hasty departure from Charlestown after Brown's execution on December 2. Greeley had other journalists "undercover" in Virginia, including Henry Steele Olcott, but to my knowledge, Olcott only arrived in Charlestown but a couple of days prior to Brown's hanging. House was the single source of information coming, as it were, from the very belly of the beast. His detailed observations thus inform the narrative of Freedom's Dawn. Taken as a whole, House's reportage has proven invaluable toward discerning the drama of Brown's actual record in Virginia. While Freedom's Dawn is about John Brown, it is also a story about the journalists--the good, the bad, and the ugly, who figure into the story of the old man's "forty days in chains." One of the lessons that emerge is the necessity of journalistic freedom being respected and protected, if nothing else, for the sake of history.

It has been observed that the occasion of Brown's defeat in Virginia gave birth to the first modern journalistic interview, particularly the Herald's interview with the abolitionist Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, N.Y. This may be true, although it is also the case that John Brown himself is probably the first "modern" figure to be covered so thoroughly by the press. On the other hand, Brown's story, skewed and dominated by proslavery journalism and censored by proslavery authorities, makes Ned House the other hero of Freedom's Dawn. One young man, risking literal life and wellbeing, interposed himself as a source of truthful reporting, and left the free record of John Brown's last days for history, for us.

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

is Associate Professor of church history and Director of the New York City campus of Alliance Theological Seminary. Quite without intending to do so, Lou has become the most prolific John Brown biographer in 150 years, and his two latest contributions have been published by Rowman and Littlefield. Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia, is the first full length narrative of the abolitionist's last days, with its companion, John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown(2015). Lou's "Fire from the Midst of You": A Religious Life of John Brown(NYU Press, 2002), was the first full length bio of Brown in the 21st century. In 2007, he published a corrective monograph, John Brown--the Cost of Freedom (International Publishers). He has also produced two essay collections, John Brown: The Man Who Lived, in honor of the sesquicentennial of the Harper's Ferry raid (Lulu, 2009), and John Brown, Emancipator (Lulu, 2012). He has also contributed chapters and reviews for scholarly books and journals.

H. Scott Wolfe

Our "Man in the Field" (Pictured here at the John Brown Farm, July 2016)

H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena (IL) Public Library District. For over thirty years, he has roamed the country...from the Kennebec Valley of Maine to the plains of eastern Kansas...in pursuit of the stories of John Brown and his men. He is a frequent contributor to this blog.

Freedom's Dawn and John Brown Speaks

. . . for the first time since 1859!

"Fire from the Midst of You": A Religious Life of John Brown

New York University Press (2002)

John Brown: The Cost of Freedom

New research, new insights!

Now available

Blog selections and a new critical essay

John Brown: The Man Who Lived

"The Useful Frontier: John Brown's Detroit River Preface to the Harper's Ferry Raid"

Contributor: A Fluid Frontier (2016)

"'The Enemy of My Enemy': Malcolm X and the Legacy of John Brown"

Contributor: Malcolm X From Political Eschatology to Religious Revolutionary (2016)